Exclusive: See James Cameron Prep His Submarine Team for a Deep Sea Dive

James Cameron’s next film is deep. Like, seven miles deep. It’s a 90-minute documentary of the Avatar director’s quest to take a submersible he designed himself way down into the Mariana Trench, so it’s literally the least superficial movie he’s ever been involved with.

Of course he didn’t do it alone. Well, his dive was a solo endeavor, but to make Deepsea Challenge 3D Cameron needed to assemble a whole team to make sure he got down to the bottom of the Pacific Ocean and back. In the clip above, exclusive to WIRED, we see him pump up that team for their first test dive in January 2012.

“The purpose of this is to signal the fact that we’re transitioning from building a sub to operating a sub,” Cameron tells them. “Everybody here is here because you’re good at what you do and you’ve proven yourselves to the project. We’re going to go out and do something truly extraordinary.”

Indeed. You can see just how extraordinary Cameron’s dive was when Deepsea Challenge 3D—directed by John Bruno, Ray Quint, and Andrew Wight—hits theaters Aug. 8.